177. Lowbrow entertainment

I.

Director Tom Six is in the news. He’s revealed that he’s been living with multiple sclerosis (MS) for fourteen years. He’s made a film about it: The End of Tom Six. It comes out on YouTube on 15 August. According to a press release, stress has caused the Dutch shock director’s health to rapidly deteriorate in recent years.

“Despite glowing reviews and fans begging for a release of The Onania Club (2019), an industry dominated by political correctness refused to touch the film,” the press release states. “For six years now he has lived in total isolation, locked away in the darkness of his Amsterdam home, with nothing left to lose and driven by an extreme obsession to create just once more.”

That has apparently resulted in a feature-length documentary (a docu with actors), about which little else is known — except that it tackles the absurdity of existence and “the lack of artistic freedom in the film industry” (sigh).

If you don’t know Tom Six, you probably do know The Human Centipede. Even if you’ve never seen the films (like me), you may have heard of them. They’re about a German doctor who kidnaps tourists and sews them together into a human centipede. The Human Centipede is a fixture on lists of the most disgusting films in the world. In several countries it was even banned.

Less well known than The Human Centipede is the film I Love Dries, which Six made together with Dries Roelvink. I have since seen that one. It’s about a Dutch couple who kidnap the popular Dutch singer because they want a child from him. Even in this early Six film (from 2007) there’s plenty of filth on display. The couple lives in a caravan, is covered in stains, eats nothing but frikandellen smothered in sauce, and lies farting next to Roelvink in bed. I don’t recommend it^¹, though the film is famous and infamous among fans of Dutch underground/cult cinema.

You have to wonder how Roelvink ever agreed to lend himself to this film. I can’t imagine his fans are the target audience. He later told Nieuwe Revu that he regretted I Love Dries: “Blimey, that was bad.”

II.

For my twelfth birthday, my parents got me an Xbox. It was my first real games console. The game that came with it was Halo: Combat Evolved.

I still remember how overwhelming it was to play Halo for the first time. There are parts of that game that are burned into my memory. Take the landing on Halo: a ring-shaped planet that later turns out to be a gigantic weapon. If you tilt the camera up, you can see the whole world. As a teenager I thought it was mind-blowing, and honestly, I still do.

I kept playing Halo for years. I lugged my Xbox to LAN parties or played split-screen multiplayer with friends on a too-small TV while we knocked back Jupilers. With the powerful pistol, I was lord and master of the level Hang ‘Em High.

This week a fully new version of the first Halo adventure came out. And I bought it again, just to see what it looks like with today’s technology. (Nice, but not quite as nice as modern blockbusters.) And because this quintessential über-Xbox game came out on PlayStation for the first time after 25 years.

Halo still holds up rock solid; I don’t need to waste many words on that. If anything, I now notice a bit more how simple the level design and story are, but you can’t hold that against an old game.

For me, most of the nostalgic magic ultimately lies in the music. I can barely get past the main menu because the music is so good. The male choir, which sounds almost religious, turns into something epic the moment the strings and percussion kick in. The contrast between mysterious sacredness and futuristic science fiction is, to me, what makes Halo special in the first place.

But the music within the game itself is incredible too. Just as I’ve blasted a camp of aliens to the stars, the track A Walk in the Woods kicks in. Amazing. I pause for a moment to listen, before the next monsters show up.

PS.

Last week I enjoyed Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. But the Simpsons version is good too.

RTV Utrecht did a great interview with popular singer Justen de Wildt of the summer hit Cheerio. With quotes like: “Yeah, beautiful Veenendaal. They say Veenendaal is more beautiful than Paris. I really do think it’s more beautiful than Paris. Here you just speak Dutch. In Paris you speak French, and I’m not that good at that.” And: “My favourite place is really my house. That’s somewhere I’m at every single day, after all.”

I watched this interview between Andrew Callaghan and Louis Theroux on Channel 5. It’s nice to see how well these two know each other’s work, swap memories, and give each other tips. But what I love most is Theroux’s enormous arsenal of accents in his anecdotes.

A new film by and starring Michael B. Jordan. I’m looking forward to that one. It’s the second remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. Lovely, that final shot in the trailer.

I found out there’s a musical about the life of Fear and Loathing writer Hunter S. Thompson. The trailer alone is already hallucinatory. I haven’t found a full recording of the show yet, but I’ll keep looking because I want to see this.

You just read blog №177, written in the week of 27 July to 2 August 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll receive it in your inbox every Sunday, free of charge.